Radical leftist arrested at airport fled over ‘death threats’

The attorney of the left-wing activist arrested Monday evening at Ben-Gurion International Airport claimed to Channel 2 on Tuesday that he was not attempting to flee the country.

Police had been trailing the man after his name came up in the "Uvda" investigative TV report last Thursday showing how a group of radical leftists get Palestinians in Judea and Samaria tortured and killed for trying to sell land to Jews.

At first they assumed he was headed to the airport to pick up someone who might be arriving, but when they realized he was heading toward flight check-in lines, police detained him.

Police said the activist was arrested on suspicion of having ties with committing a crime as well as contact with a foreign agent. He will be brought for a remand hearing Tuesday.

Because he is accused of security-related crimes, he has been denied the right to see his lawyer for a period of five days.

While it appears the unnamed activist was trying to flee Israel, his attorney Leah Tzemel attributes the move to the death threats he had recently begun receiving.

"People began publishing his address on various right-wing sites and his friends abroad told him to come to them," she alleged. "He thought since there was no arrest warrant preventing him from leaving the country and that he had not been summoned for an investigation – it was a good opportunity to take this vacation."

"The whole story has really hurt him, so he decided to go," Tzemel added. "This is not an escape attempt. He took into account that this could happen, but he has the full right to [leave the country]."